Editorial: Governor’s inability to do job is the issue

Wednesday

Dec 24, 2008 at 12:01 AMDec 24, 2008 at 2:25 AM

We are neither surprised nor particularly concerned that U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald has declined the Illinois House impeachment committee’s request for details about his criminal case against Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

We are neither surprised nor particularly concerned that U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald has declined the Illinois House impeachment committee’s request for details about his criminal case against Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

Like most other observers of the committee’s proceedings, we never expected Fitzgerald to share any aspect of his investigation, especially anything involving the wiretap evidence that is the backbone of the criminal complaint on which the FBI arrested Blagojevich and his former chief of staff, John Harris, on Dec. 9.

While that arrest was the catalyst for the impeachment hearing currently under way in the House, the criminal case behind it is all but irrelevant.

The simple fact that Blagojevich got himself arrested by the FBI is merely another piece of evidence of his inability to govern. There is a mountain of other proof not related to any federal criminal investigation that we believe will be sufficient to remove him from office.

Rep. Lou Lang, D-Skokie, made the same point the day after Blagojevich’s arrest.

“The people that are getting all excited and jumping up and down and saying, ‘What a crook, let’s impeach him,’ — he may well be a crook, but that isn’t the reason he ought to be impeached,” Lang, now a member of the House impeachment committee, told The State Journal-Register two weeks ago. “The reason he ought to be impeached is not for what we can’t prove but for what we already can prove.”

Even the few days of House committee testimony we have heard so far has provided a bounty of such evidence.

For example:

Blagojevich’s pursuit of imported drugs (both for his I-SaveRX drug program and for flu vaccine from England) despite warnings that it violated federal rules; the administration’s sidestepping of the state Procurement Policy Board, which is supposed to oversee state leases and contracts; its disregard for the legislature’s Joint Committee on Administrative Rules in expanding health-care programs; its repeated refusal to provide information to the office of Illinois Auditor William Holland in the course of routine audits.

And there will be plenty more to come, none of it pertaining to allegedly trying to sell a U.S. Senate seat, shake down a hospital CEO for campaign cash or get editorial writers fired. An impeachment proceeding is not a court of law, which is why the committee needs to leave criminal allegations against Blagojevich to Fitzgerald.

His letter Monday should allow the House committee to place its focus solely where it should be — on Blagojevich’s dismal performance as governor.